Oh, and BTW, to be fair, it isn't only the president of a nation that influences carbon agenda. Hmmm, who else could be carbon-dependent?
Showing posts with label cheap oil. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cheap oil. Show all posts
Jon Stewart Takes Down Oil Proclamations
This week Richard Heinberg, author and fellow at the Post Carbon Institute, wrote of scenarios related to the Deepwater spill in the Gulf. He included the Daily Show clip from last week in which Jon Stewart hammers home the intent of our presidents of the past, per their proclamations about United States energy independence. Alas, Barack continued the "plea" last week.
Fortunately, nothing escapes Jon Stewart. Thankfully, humor gives us breathing space. Enjoy, but mind the savvy message.
Oh, and BTW, to be fair, it isn't only the president of a nation that influences carbon agenda. Hmmm, who else could be carbon-dependent?
Oh, and BTW, to be fair, it isn't only the president of a nation that influences carbon agenda. Hmmm, who else could be carbon-dependent?
Thoughts On Population Carrying Capacity
Our current era seems to be filled with either too little or too much. We have too much CO2. We have too little potable water. Our planet has a need for far more natural balances. But imbalance seems to be the name of the game.
The crux of this era’s complex puzzle may lie with people. The number of people. Too many. Too many consumers. Consumers of space, of food, of transportation, of heating and cooling, of water, of any product we need or think we need.
Carrying capacity was generally used to assess the amount of land necessary to graze livestock. Given X number of acres with X amount of grass, you can graze X number of animals in a sustained way. Adding animals to this area would result in imbalance: grass would not get a chance to regerminate, trails and tracks would become rutted, erosion would carry away soil, stressed animals would compete and for ever more meager nourishment. This is not a sustainable situation required for farming. The farmer would need to either cut back on the herd or supplement feed and rotate animals from field to barn. Costs in dollars and time would rise.
All biological systems strive for a balanced carrying capacity: sustainability. It’s not surprising, therefore, that humans must be included in this model. We’ve all seen the charts and heard the dire warnings about population numbers. Scientist Thomas Malthus became concerned about the carrying capacity of humans on Earth way back in the 18th century. Demographers since then have been wary of the growing numbers of our species and its ability to be sustained.
Malthus couldn't have conceived how the timeline for population "overshoot" might extend itself. He could not have envisioned the extent of developing industrialization. The 19th and 20th century would encourage cultures to assume the carrying capacity of Earth could be expanded. And it was expanded, artificially, with the help of oil. Oil-run industry was able to promote a limitless sense of a modern lifestyle. It promoted growth. "Growth was good." Those of Earth’s cultures who were able, jumped on the evolving growth bandwagon.
“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of a cancer cell,” maintained the blunt Edward Abbey. In the 1960’s he was speaking as a defender of the natural environment that was being swallowed by development. More people were taking more land or degrading natural landscapes at alarming rates. Precious resources, such as fresh water, were becoming even more scarce.
Environmentalist cries like Abbey’s were often taken with a grain of salt back then. Societies were accustomed to the feel of growth and the confidence that technology and fossil fuels would handle all comers. Fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and other petro-chemicals were providing increased food production. Interstate highways were built and cars with single passengers commuted from new suburbs.
How did we get onto the treadmill of growth for growth’s sake? What exactly is a sustainable population? How do the numbers crunch? Are we back to the concept of finiteness?
Thoughts without graphs...
The crux of this era’s complex puzzle may lie with people. The number of people. Too many. Too many consumers. Consumers of space, of food, of transportation, of heating and cooling, of water, of any product we need or think we need.
Carrying capacity was generally used to assess the amount of land necessary to graze livestock. Given X number of acres with X amount of grass, you can graze X number of animals in a sustained way. Adding animals to this area would result in imbalance: grass would not get a chance to regerminate, trails and tracks would become rutted, erosion would carry away soil, stressed animals would compete and for ever more meager nourishment. This is not a sustainable situation required for farming. The farmer would need to either cut back on the herd or supplement feed and rotate animals from field to barn. Costs in dollars and time would rise.
All biological systems strive for a balanced carrying capacity: sustainability. It’s not surprising, therefore, that humans must be included in this model. We’ve all seen the charts and heard the dire warnings about population numbers. Scientist Thomas Malthus became concerned about the carrying capacity of humans on Earth way back in the 18th century. Demographers since then have been wary of the growing numbers of our species and its ability to be sustained.
Malthus couldn't have conceived how the timeline for population "overshoot" might extend itself. He could not have envisioned the extent of developing industrialization. The 19th and 20th century would encourage cultures to assume the carrying capacity of Earth could be expanded. And it was expanded, artificially, with the help of oil. Oil-run industry was able to promote a limitless sense of a modern lifestyle. It promoted growth. "Growth was good." Those of Earth’s cultures who were able, jumped on the evolving growth bandwagon.
“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of a cancer cell,” maintained the blunt Edward Abbey. In the 1960’s he was speaking as a defender of the natural environment that was being swallowed by development. More people were taking more land or degrading natural landscapes at alarming rates. Precious resources, such as fresh water, were becoming even more scarce.
Environmentalist cries like Abbey’s were often taken with a grain of salt back then. Societies were accustomed to the feel of growth and the confidence that technology and fossil fuels would handle all comers. Fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and other petro-chemicals were providing increased food production. Interstate highways were built and cars with single passengers commuted from new suburbs.
How did we get onto the treadmill of growth for growth’s sake? What exactly is a sustainable population? How do the numbers crunch? Are we back to the concept of finiteness?
Thoughts without graphs...
Finite Oil: Fossil Fuel Reality
Non-renewable resources, especially oil and coal, are quickly re-enforcing this notion of what you see is what you get. Maybe more quickly than most of us know. Climate Change, even on a slow day, gets more attention than other pieces of the healthy Earth puzzle. This ailing patient has, I’m afraid, more than one malady to overcome.
Picture yourself holding up a globe at the front of the classroom, patting it affectionately, and saying to the class,
“Everything we have is right here. Everything we need is right here.”
But do we really fathom the implications of these comments?
You set down the blue and green globe and pick up a clear plastic globe with a hole in the top. Into this hole you pour sloshing greasy liquid from a one liter measuring container. Exactly one liter.
“Pretend this is all of the oil within Earth as of 200 years ago...every single bit of oil that is in cracks and pools under the land and oceans, or seeped deeply into rock.”
Now, turn the plastic globe and empty out enough to fill the measuring container back up to the one-half liter mark.
“In the past couple hundred years, people on Earth have used oil for all sorts of things, like plastic and gasoline and fuel to heat houses. Guess how much people have used? Yup. One-half. We have used up one half of all the oil we know to exist on Earth.”The concept is Peak Oil. Since extraction of oil began (history of oil production: here and here) for its myriad purposes, more has been produced each year than the year before. Globally, always more than the year before. Peak Oil is the term for the point in time where more oil cannot be extracted in a certain year(s) than the year before. The extraction rate has peaked. Of course because oil is unevenly distributed within the Earth, this varies from nation to nation. (The US peaked in 1970.) But, globally, it means that only one-half the original resource remains under ground.
We still retain this one-half. But the first half was “easy” and “cheap” oil. Drill and flow. Of the balance, the expenses will rise until it is uneconomical to extract. It will take more energy to extract a barrel than that barrel is worth. Much of the second half of oil will remain untapped for this reason.
It is now estimated by many that the Earth reached peak oil in our current decade, specifically within the last couple of years. Other estimates give us another decade, and so on. Regardless of the exact year, Peak Oil is upon us. M.King Hubbert, a geophysicist, calculated in the 1950‘s the peak year of United States' oil with his bell curve. He was very close in his prediction. Oil peak charts now refer to him as one of the first to outline upcoming oil data.
Our difficulty arises, of course, when consumption outpaces a declining availability of oil. When will oil become too expensive for common use? The Earth’s population is seven billion. Will conservation offset population growth? Will technology intercede to offset lack of oil? Will there be government restrictions on oil and natural gas usage? Will the United States take a lead in dealing with oil reduction? Will "developed" countries find themselves in need of cultural behavior changes? Will there be another misguided cry of, "What's our oil doing under your sands?"
Plain old statistics to ponder: Current
“A Crude Awakening” is a compelling and sometimes entertaining documentary on 20th century usage of oil. It would be worth everyone’s time to set aside an hour to watch this 2006 film.
Plain old statistics to ponder: Current
- 1 oil barrel = 42 gallons
- World oil extraction ~ 85.47 million barrels/day
- World oil consumption ~ 85.53 million barrels/day
- United States extraction ~4.95 million barrels/day
- United State importations ~9.78 million barrels/day
- US gasoline use only ~ 8.9 million barrels/day
“A Crude Awakening” is a compelling and sometimes entertaining documentary on 20th century usage of oil. It would be worth everyone’s time to set aside an hour to watch this 2006 film.
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